evilauthor wrote:It's the (perhaps not so far) future from current Safehold events. Safehold has recovered/reinvented FTL travel and discovered habitable world nearby that looks ideal for colonization by humans.
Like many other worlds discovered and settled by the old Terran Federation, this new world has a totally alien biosphere that nevertheless is (mostly) compatible with Safeholdian and Terran biology. And parallel evolution has created many plant and animal species that look very similar to Safeholdian and Terran lifeforms.
One such species is a tree that bears an uncanny resemblance to a Safeholdian nearoak tree. What do colonists from Safehold call it?
One of the problems I have with the Safehold series is the naming. When colonists from Europe arrived in North America and Australia, say, they didn't call beasties and plants 'near' anything. They just mislabeled them.
So, any smallish bird with a red breast was a 'robin' even if the bird didn't otherwise look or act or have any relation to the European Robin.
Sure, they borrowed native names, which Safehold doesn't have the option of doing, but still...
Moreover, given the amount of linguistic shift there's been, even if something WERE named 'nearoak' that would quickly wear down to 'noak' or 'roak'. *Or... More likely still 'oak'!)
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Calling something a 'nearoak' suggests that the 'oak' is, in some sense, the 'original', and the 'nearoak' a variant.
When you look at all the entities that are 'near' or 'false', they are all clearly part of a group - and the various originals are part of another group. The fact that 'unconsecrated' land is solidly the first group is a really big clue that
